Night feeder: fishing at night

Fishing with a feeder at night is something special, both in terms of sensations and in the matter of choosing equipment. Fishing with a feeder at night is something special, both in terms of sensations and in the matter of choosing equipment. And the result, with the right approach, is impressive. Therefore, the night feeder deserves detailed consideration. Let's decide what equipment to take, at what point to cast, and when to start fishing. But first of all, let’s look at why it’s worth fishing with a feeder at night. Just a few reasons, and you will immediately understand the advantages of such fishing.

Night feeder accessories

The set is standard - for feeder fishing at night you will need the following equipment:

rod with reel
main line
leashes
feeder and bait
hooks and bait
fireflies
landing net and rod under

We propose to consider one by one those elements of equipment that have specifically “night” features. We will only touch upon those components that are the same as during daytime fishing.

How to spot a bite at night

The easiest way to detect a bite, without even using a flashlight, is to attach a “firefly” to the top of the rod. "Firefly" is a sealed strip with a luminous component inside. It is the only way to fish at night other than holding a flashlight. All vibrations will become noticeable in any lighting.

It is important to choose the right color, since too bright elements have a negative effect on the eyes, and their fatigue leads to drowsiness. The green and yellow “fireflies” proved to be the most successful.

After choosing the color of the glow, you should attach the element to the fishing rod. “Firefly” is attached in one of 3 ways:

A firefly on the rod tip and a headlamp are essential attributes of night fishing

Using clear tape. A quick and simple method, it does not impair the casting of gear. The only drawback is the reduction in brightness.
Through a special mount. The bite alarm for the feeder can be mounted on the quivertip using a plastic mount. The main advantage of this method is that fluorescent plastic is used, which makes the light appear more voluminous and bright. The disadvantage of this method is the load on the quiver tip; this is important when using tips with the least strength.
Fastening with two rings made of silicone tubes (supplied). This is the easiest way, just cut off the silicone rings and pull them onto the top between the 2nd ring and the tulip. Putting on is carried out until the cord or fishing line enters the feeder rings. "Firefly" is introduced before darkening begins.

Choosing a rod for night fishing

You need a feeder with a fast action, since when darkness falls, it is the large fish that are caught on the hook, but they do not make weak bites.
In addition, at night our potential prey is less careful, so it swallows the bait sharply and decisively. So you need a rod that will quickly exhaust the fish, and this is a fast feeder. Also keep in mind that at night there is little point in casting far, since the “big fish” feed in shallow water. The fishing distance is 30-40 m, no more. Therefore, a rod up to 3.6 m long will be sufficient.

Coil

may be the same as during daytime fishing. Based on practice, we recommend inertia-free universal models - their capabilities are enough to catch even trophy specimens.

Feeder at night

It is better to take a flashlight with one LED.
PHOTO BY ALEXEY MURASHKO

Night feeder fishing is a fascinating, interesting and exciting type of fishing, which is gaining more and more supporters every year. It’s enough to try it once - and sleeping in nature will no longer seem so desirable. After all, night time can be spent more usefully.

The ability to fish in a variety of ways, both from the shore and from a boat, can radically change a fisherman’s life. Fans of feeder fishing are the most impatient in this regard: with the onset of summer, wide opportunities open up for them to use their favorite gear in other conditions - during night fishing. Fishing in pitch darkness gives you the feeling that you are fishing in a completely different body of water.

WHY NIGHT?

For the uninitiated, night fishing looks like an action devoid of any meaning. Instead of a sound healthy sleep, sitting all night, carefully watching the top - is this pure fanaticism? Not at all, if you look closely at the specific behavior of fish in the summer. When the water has heated up to the limit, many representatives of white fish, and primarily bream, carp and crucian carp, switch to feeding at night. With the onset of darkness, the water temperature drops, which has a positive effect on the feeding activity of the fish. At the same time, she becomes bolder, leaves the deep areas that she tries to stick to during the day, and goes out to vast shallows rich in food. Without feeling threatened, the fish actively feeds until dawn.

This statement is also true for most rivers: the same chubs and ides that stick to the riverbed edges during the day, when night falls, come out onto the sandbanks, the depth of which does not exceed half a meter, and actively feed. However, as soon as dawn breaks, the fish goes back to the depths.

In summer, sometimes the situation develops rapidly: the water becomes like fresh milk, the swimming season reaches its climax. Fish that react negatively to such a high temperature of their habitat completely stops feeding during the daytime and switches to feeding at night and twilight hours. The best bite is observed from dawn and lasts until sunrise. Few people know that in a particular place fishing is even better at night. Moreover, it is not at all necessary to look for fish in the distant reaches: bream, crucian carp, carp and even tench happily feed in the coastal zone, providing the opportunity to catch them with delicate picker gear. The situation does not change much with the arrival of autumn. Despite the cooling of the water and the massive migration of fish to deeper areas, the fish feed just as intensively at night, and even in October - November, when the dark period of the day lasts long enough, the active biting of bream and bream occurs precisely at night. By the way, during the day in such places you may not see a single bite.

PHOTO BY ANTON ZHURAVKOV

If we talk about night fishing, we can highlight a number of advantages for which the angler should stay on the shore and spend a sleepless night enjoying his favorite pastime. ● Comfortable stay near the water. The heat of the day gives way to the coolness of the night, the scorching sun hides behind the horizon. The air temperature stays around +15, +20 °C, due to which many of the nuances of fishing in the heat become irrelevant: the bait does not sour, the bait does not spoil, and the angler is spared the need to constantly plunge into the water to escape the exhausting heat. ● Catchability. The night reservoir often rewards the fisherman with catches that are difficult to imagine during the day. Fishing takes place in shallow water areas and much closer to the shore, which eliminates the need to use long casts and heavy gear. ● Silence. Not everyone practices night fishing, which means that the number of neighboring fishermen and vacationers on the shore is reduced to a minimum. ● Wind. With the onset of darkness, the wind usually subsides and there is complete calm over the reservoir. Fishing in such conditions is greatly simplified, casting accuracy increases, and delicate bites are clearly visible. ● Lack of change. Night allows you to hunt for large fish even in those reservoirs that are characterized by the dominance of small fish. If in daylight the hook with bait is not allowed to reach the bottom by bleak, small roach and silver bream, then you should wait until dark and try fishing at this point again. With a high degree of probability, it can be said that large bream, crucian carp and tench will not keep you waiting, and even two bloodworms or one or two maggots will be able to wait for the “bonus” and not be eaten by small things.

SELECTION OF LOCATION

Most often, the place for night fishing does not differ in any way from the area where fishing takes place during the day. And yet, if we talk about specific points that work best, we should highlight shallow water irrigation bordering the channel edges. When choosing a fishing spot, the angler must carefully study a detailed map of the reservoir and find areas where the flooded river bed passes as close as possible to the shore, that is, at a distance that makes it easy to accurately cast. In my practice, there is a similar place where shallow irrigation (1.5–2.0 meters deep) ends with a sharp drop into the riverbed and in a few steps the depth increases from 2 to 4–4.5 meters. Such a sharp channel edge is a great place for night fishing. It has been repeatedly noticed: if during the day the majority of bites occur either at the bottom of the dump, or somewhat further from it, in the channel ditch itself, then with the onset of night the bites at depth stop: the fish comes out to feed at a depth of two meters, where it is excellently caught. The morning puts everything in its place: watering stops producing bites, but the point located under the dump “comes to life.”

If you have to be distracted from the gear, a bell helps out. PHOTO BY ANTON ZHURAVKOV

All kinds of shallow coastal areas, abundantly overgrown with a wall of reeds and reeds, are also good. This wall, as a rule, cuts far into the water and extends 25–30 meters from the shore. Wide windows made in such thickets provide an excellent place for night feeder fishing. As a rule, here you don’t even need to study the bottom topography in order to select a specific area: fishing takes place on the border of reeds and clean water. During the daytime, these areas are characterized by a large number of all kinds of small things - roach, bleak, rudd and silver bream, frantically tearing apart any, even the largest bait like canned corn and a couple of dung worms. With the onset of dusk, all this brethren goes to bed together, giving way to truly large fish. The fishing spot is fed abundantly, and after a while fish of decent size begin to bite: bream and bream, carp and carp, crucian carp and tench. As is usually the case, the celebration of life does not last long, exactly until sunrise.

FEEDING TACTICS

When planning night fishing, you should remember that in any body of water there are small fish that are active during the day. When the fishing point is determined and the angler starts feeding, he must understand that the first thing to come up for food will be the small fish. This moment plays a significant role in preparing a place for night fishing. If you feed heavily before dark, then the chances that the bait will attract the target fish will approach zero: the ubiquitous small fish can deal with a large amount of food in a fairly short time. Considering that bait uses a large amount of animal components to maximize its attractive properties - maggots and bloodworms, which will become the main target of small fish - feeding the fishing point should be done already at dusk. This usually happens as follows. Evening fishing begins a few hours before dark; at this time the angler closely monitors the situation. If there are no small fish at the fishing point, and bites bring the target fish - large bream and crucian carp - it makes sense to start feeding and work with the main composition, enriched with a large number of nutritional components. If bites occur literally on every cast, and little things haunt you, the optimal solution would be to work with a depleted base composition, devoid of essential nutrients. The attractive properties of such a composition in the absence of competition from other anglers are at a fairly high level, but collecting fish is not the main goal at the moment. During fishing, the behavior of small fish is monitored. As soon as the bite stops and the bait returns untouched, it’s time to feed the point: the leash is removed, and 10–15 feeders, enriched with aromatics, coarse particles, as well as maggots and bloodworms, are sent to the fishing point one after another. This happens at dusk, when fines reduce food activity to almost zero. This means that the bait will have every chance to wait for a large fish to approach and keep it at the fishing point for a long time.

The approach of large fish, as a rule, begins some time after dark. Analyzing the past seasons of night fishing, I identified two main peaks of biting: after midnight (before 1:00–1:30) and before dawn (from 2:00 until morning twilight). Bites at this time occur, if not on every cast, then quite often. It is for this reason that the fisherman must feed the fishing point without slowing down: a school of fish that approaches eats a large amount of food quickly enough, and in order to keep it at the fishing point, the feeder should be recast frequently, at least once every 5-6 minutes .

PHOTO BY ALEXEY MURASHKO

When fishing at night, as during the day, the accuracy of casting equipment is of utmost importance. And if our fishing distance is limited by the clip on the reel, then the left-right spread can be significant. It is for this reason that fishing should begin some time before dusk. The angler must carefully determine the guidelines for casting, set the chair in such a way as to ensure maximum comfort, and also fish at this point for some time in order to “place his hand” and get used to casting in a certain direction. In addition, you should turn off your headlamp before casting: a beam of light hitting the butt of the rod during the swing blinds the angler and contributes to his disorientation in space.

EQUIPMENT

Despite all the obvious advantages of night fishing, its main disadvantage - pitch darkness - significantly complicates the fishing process. In order for fishing to take place in the most comfortable conditions for the fisherman, you should take care of high-quality lighting sources. First, it's a headlamp. Preference should be given to models with one powerful LED that has focusing ability. These flashlights provide a powerful and bright stream of white light that perfectly illuminates the work area. Secondly, this is a quality camping lantern. Or rather, two flashlights: one is installed near the working surface or on a table with nozzles and baits laid out around it, and the second is fixed on a stand and installed in such a way that its light is directed at the signal tips of the rods. However, such illumination alone is not enough; you should also acquire high-quality fireflies attached to the tops. This can be done in different ways. Many people prefer ordinary tape, however, in my opinion, the optimal solution would be to use special holders for fireflies, equipped with two grooves: one of them is put on the tip directly on the winding of the pass ring, and the other is clamped to the tip itself. Fixation of fireflies produced in this way is reliable, and the number of overlaps when using them tends to zero.

Alexey Murashko September 8, 2015 at 01:32 pm

Choosing the main line for the night feeder

Here, the best option would be a monofilament line - yes, it has a certain stretchability, but the rod will also have a fast action, that is, it will not smooth out the jerks of large fish very well. These two comparative disadvantages compensate each other, turning into a plus in our case. Due to the short casting distance, the stretchability of the monofilament will not reduce sensitivity, and the bites will be strong.

Although braid can also be chosen as the main line, only then you need to protect the cord with an insert made of feeder gum or a shock leader. In this case, the jerks of the fish will be absorbed.

Choosing leashes for night fishing on the feeder

You can give preference to one of three options:

Made from thick fishing line with a significant breaking load - for trophy specimens. You just need to fish with such leashes late at night, and closer to dawn they should be changed to thinner ones. Otherwise, even the most careless fish will notice your equipment and may not bite.
Made from very thin fishing line, with a maximum load of 2.5 kg - in this case, the leashes must be additionally protected from breakage with the already mentioned feeder. An elastic insert 15 cm long is enough to easily catch a trophy specimen or so.
Made from fluorocarbonate fishing line of medium diameter - its masking properties will come in handy. It is visible to fish 2-2.5 times worse than usual. You can make a fairly thick and reliable leash, for example, 0.2 mm in diameter, and it will be just as invisible as a thin one of 0.1 mm, but its breaking load will be 2 times higher.

Naturally, the most practical option is to prepare all varieties and not in one copy. With a large number of leashes, you can adapt to changes in the time of day and fish with maximum efficiency even all night long.

Leash length

should not be too big - 50 cm is enough. And then, in this case, it already needs to be made from a rigid fishing line, and with it there is no natural play of the bait. Therefore, to avoid alerting potential prey, we recommend not going overboard with the length of the leash.

Choosing hooks and bait for night fishing

If your goal is a trophy specimen, prepare a decent animal bait for it. Excellent options are earthworm and crawler. You can bait them either with an “accordion”, piercing them in several places, or with a “stocking”, passing the fore-end through the entire body. In this case, the size of the hook should be quite large. For a worm you will need No. 10, for a crawl - No. 8.

If you don’t set out to catch a trophy, but just want to fish well at night, take the same hooks and baits that you would use during the day. And here you are guaranteed a variety of choice.

Selecting the remaining equipment for the night feeder

Let’s write just a few words about the feeder and groundbait, the landing net and its kind. They need to be selected in the same way as for daytime fishing. It won’t be difficult to decide, since there are a great variety of baits, we also looked at the specifics of buying feeders, and we paid enough attention to both the species and the landing net. The queue is yours - give preference to high-quality models, and forward to the casting point.

Although there is one important detail left - you need to buy fireflies. These are visual bite indicators - even in the most impenetrable darkness they will show you that the fish is biting. Choosing a firefly is also not a tricky matter.

What kind of fish can be caught on a night feeder?

Quite often, it is when fishing at night on a feeder that you can achieve good results. In the summer, and not only that, many species of fish switch to feeding at night. This is due not only to the increased water temperature in summer, but also to certain features of the reservoir, including the presence of predators in the reservoir that hunt during the daytime. And no matter how large a peaceful fish is, on an instinctive level, it is afraid of a predator and tries to stay in safe places when the predator is active, rather than feed.

At night, carp, bream, crucian carp, silver bream, and chub are caught on the feeder. Moreover, the intensity of the bite at night can significantly exceed the number of bites during the day. And specimens caught at night often exceed the size of fish that bite during the day.

How to find and prepare a place for night fishing on a feeder

Finding a place is simple: you need an area with a familiar bottom, without tall grass, bushes and other thickets near the water that interfere in poor visibility conditions.
Of course, all such plant obstructions can be removed by cutting or tearing them out. And time will need to be spent exploring the bottom, if the place is unfamiliar. So come for night fishing not even in the evening, but 2.5-3 hours before sunset. It will take about 60-90 minutes to study the bottom, 30-60 to prepare the shore and another 30-60 to prepare bait and feed.

At the same time, the fishing point (attention, important point) is not the exit from the edge and not a hole, as during the day. At night, cast closer to the shore, on a flat or even sloping bottom, where the depth is no more than 3 m.

To ensure the accuracy of bait delivery to the fishing point in poor visibility conditions, you need to create a visual reference for yourself. The easiest way is to notice some object on the opposite bank and focus on it. Although at night this method may fail. A more reliable option is luminous buoys, but they cost money and still need to be pulled out after fishing.

Therefore, we offer a simple way to mark a landmark for night fishing on a feeder:

Before dark you determine the bait delivery point.
Record your footprints in the place where you will stand during the night casts.
Place the landing net between them so that it faces the bait delivery point.
When darkness falls, stand in the direction of casting and see everything perfectly.

Selection and preparation of a site

You need to arrive at a familiar shore at least an hour before sunset - half an hour to arrange a place on the shore and prepare bait, and another half hour to pre-feed. If the shore is unfamiliar, it will take more time to arrange it - somewhere you will need to cut off tall grass, somewhere you will need to trim branches of bushes so as not to break off the hooks during casting at night. In addition, you need to add about an hour to study the bottom.

The point should be chosen not in a hole or behind the edge, as during the day, but closer to the shore, at a depth of up to three meters. The bottom should be flat or slightly sloping, preferably sandy or clayey, without snags or snags.

On the opposite bank, you need to choose a landmark for casting, which will be clearly visible against the sky at night. Of course, if the night is clear and no fog rises above the water. In this case, as preventive measures, there are a lot of proposals that mainly boil down to placing various luminous buoys and floats in one way or another at the fishing point. Even if this succeeds, sooner or later it will end with the fact that after the next cast this buoy will be hooked by the equipment and pulled ashore.

It is more realistic to use a long landing net or a spare rod as a guide in poor visibility conditions. To do this, before dark, when preparing the place, you need to record the footprints of your feet on the shore when casting. Then place two stands so that if you put a landing net on them, then after standing on these marks, the handle of the landing net will show the direction of casting (see picture).

In conditions when the landmark is not visible, you need to cast by placing your feet on these marks and focusing on the direction of the landing net handle, which, if necessary, can be illuminated with a headlamp. The greater the distance between the footprints and the butt of the landing net, the more accurately the handle shows the direction of casting. Therefore, the tracks can be fixed further from the shore or the landing net can be moved forward as far as possible. Or both together.

If the landing net posts can interfere with fishing, then the casting area should be equipped somewhat away from the location. Of course, the proposed method is also not God knows what, but it is the best that, without fantasizing, can actually be offered under these conditions.

Night bites are sudden and quite powerful. If our leash is also not weak, then it is very important to adjust the reel clutch well, otherwise it is possible that you will have to catch up with the rod by swimming. At least at first I had to swim. However, I don't think a batrunner reel would be useful. Trophies that can drag the rod off the racks are very rare, and with the baitrunner turned on, it is impossible to hook the bream in a timely manner.

The bell on the feeder is nonsense. The feeder is not a donk, where the bell signals not a bite, but that the fish has already been detected.

After which the bell is removed. There is no time to remove the bell on the feeder - when there is a bite, you need to hook it, and after hooking you need to fish it out. So he will rattle all over the area until we deal with the fish. It’s good if other fishermen on the shore are well-mannered people with a stable psyche and treat amateurs with understanding.

It is possible that after the second or third call back they may come up and offer to move half a kilometer further, so that it will be difficult to refuse. And, by and large, they will be right.

When to start night fishing on a feeder

We have already described above when to arrive at the place and prepare for fishing. Now let's move directly to the casting schedule:

23:00-00:00 - time of the evening bite, more sluggish and rare than during the day. Casting should be infrequent, with breaks of 15 minutes. And all because the bites will occur once every 10-20 minutes.
00:00-03:00 is “dead” time for all fish except catfish. If this is what you are fishing for, you can make casts more often - up to one every 10 minutes. If not, continue sending the feeder to the point at the same pace - every 15 minutes.
From 03:00 is the time for active night biting. Gradually increase the frequency of casts; the interval between them during this period can reach 5 minutes. At this stage, it is worth adding dry mixture to the bait so that it washes out faster, so leave it in advance. Fish until one small fish begins to bite - a signal that the “big fish” have gone to depth.

Night feeder is a treat worth trying: make sure we're right.